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Hank Williams
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He and his Drifting Cowboys had been booked to play a show in Canton, Ohio and Williams hired a driver to chauffeur him through a snowstorm to the gig. He fell asleep on the way - but when the driver tried to rouse him at Oak Hill, Virginia, he was found to be dead. After his death his records continued to sell in massive quantities, Your Cheatin' Heart, Take These Chains From My Heart, I Won't Be Home No More & Weary Blue From Waitin' all charted during the year that followed.
The last years of Williams life - though financially rewarding - were ultra tragic. A drug user in order to combat a spinal ailment caused by being thrown from a horse at the age of 17, he was fired from the Grand Ole Opry in August, 1952 because of perpetual drunkenness and also divorced by his wife Audry Sheperd - though he re-married, to Billie Jean Jones daughter of a Louisiana police chief, soon after.
A difficult man to work with, being moody and incommunicative, he was much respected and loved by the country music fraternity, over 20,000 attending his funeral in Montgomery, at which Roy Acuff, Carl Smith, Red Foley & Ernest Tubb paid tribute in song.
His songs were well accepted in pop too - his compositions providing million selling discs for Joni James, Tony Bennet Jo Stafford etc. Williams' material has been recorded by rock bands folk singers etc etc.
Elected to the Country Music Hall Of Fame in 1961 his plaque reads "The simple beautiful melodies and straightforward plaintive stories in his lyrics of life as he knew it will never die"
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Courtesy of Salamander Books LTD, London - New York
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